


Vodka and Daisies

by springbok7



Series: An Assortment of Teas and Biscuits [2]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: #MinervaSafe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluff, Injured agents being useful, Mallory needs a minute, Medically drugged agents, Mission support agents, Multi, No apologies for all the cavities, established poly relationship, so much unadulterated fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-05 21:29:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14627391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/springbok7/pseuds/springbok7
Summary: Alec escapes Medical, with their unofficial blessing, to go assist Q on comms with mission support. M finds this isn't as terrible an idea as first it would seem. Once he has scrapped his jaw off the floor, that is.





	Vodka and Daisies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Boffin1710](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boffin1710/gifts), [AsheTarasovich (natalieashe)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/natalieashe/gifts), [Dassandre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dassandre/gifts), [jaimistoryteller](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaimistoryteller/gifts).



> Thanks heaps to the fabulous [Dassandre](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Dassandre) for all of your encouragement. Have a wee pick-me-up. Sorry it took me so long to finally get this out into the light of day. <3
> 
> This one's also for you, [Boffin](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Boffin1710). I hope the horizons are less cloudy than they have been! <3
> 
> [Ashe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/natalieashe/pseuds/AsheTarasovich), thanks for being there when I needed someone to rail with. <3
> 
> Beta-ed by [Dassandre](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Dassandre). All remaining typos and oddities are mine. If you spot any errors and/or feel there should be additional tags, please do let me know. I welcome constructive criticism, but neither support or feed trolls.
> 
>  
> 
> _It is beyond tragic that I do not own these characters. No infringement of copyright is intended and no profit is being made from this piece of fan-fiction._

"Double O Six! What the devil are you doing in Q-branch?  I know for a fact Medical has _not_ cleared you for release.  If they had done, I'd be hearing the celebration upstairs in my office!"  Minions all around Q-Branch jumped, turned to find the source of the raised voice, and saw Mallory -- stood not even three feet inside the branch -- glaring across the room at his agent.

Alec ignored his boss for long minutes, as did the Quartermaster, whose graceful fingers continued to dance across the keys of the two keyboards and one laptop arrayed in front of him.

Alec Trevelyan, Agent OO6 of Her Majesty's Secret Service, was sat on a low stool, his plaster-encased right leg stretched out in front of him with the other -- devoid of any plaster of its own, and sporting a fluorescent green hospital sock and dull grey slipper -- tucked in under the opposing thigh. His eyes were closed and he was leant back against the boxes stacked up under Q's workbench, canted slightly towards the working Quartermaster. The agent's shoulder was tucked behind Q's left thigh, left arm loosely curled around Q's leg to the back of Q's calf, where Alec’s wrist rested on his own bent kneecap, hand dangling like a limp, wet rag hung up on a hook to dry.

His right arm was secured in a sling to relieve pressure on a broken collarbone. The impact which broke his leg had also resulted in two clavicle fractures.  The central bone segment had displaced and required surgical repair with screws to keep the bone where it belonged. The surgery was minimally invasive, because the surgeon had used the same wound through which one of the bones had protruded to effect repairs. One less scar there for Alec to add to his collection. From that injury at any rate.

The back of his right hand, mottled in a patchwork of healing bruises, sported a heavily taped intravenous feed that passed over his shoulder to a bag hanging from the wheeled pole parked at the end of the workbench; a wheelchair and a crutch were just visible past the pole. His taped hand curled somewhat awkwardly against the back of Q's leg.  Mallory's sharp eyes noticed the fingers moved periodically.

As he watched, the long fingers stroked up and down the fabric of Q's grey trousers, before stilling for a moment and then tapping speedily against the back of Q's knee.

Q paused his rapid-fire typing for a moment, lifted his left hand and tangled his fingers through the agent's hair, before firing off curt commands into his microphone and renewing his typing.

Mallory stared speechless at the scene, until R appeared at his shoulder, the rest of the minions having returned to their own tasks; continuing to stare at the flabbergasted M would not earn them any points with either Q or their director.  

"Something I can help you with, Sir?" the petite woman with the ever-changing hair colour asked. It was green today, the kind of green the sea shows in sheltered coves with white sand beaches and tiny breakers ebbing and flowing; that soft, pearlescent shade that was instantly calming. It was far less fluorescent than the majority of her choices, but he liked it.

He cleared his throat, a touch embarrassed at having been staring at his agent and his quartermaster.

"What on earth are they doing?" he finally gave voice to the question rattling around in his brain, as he waved a hand in Q's general direction; the oblivious Quartermaster once again had his hand buried in OO6's hair, stroking absently while his right stabbed at his worktop as though he were having an argument with someone and using the finger to emphasize something to the absent party.

Her eyes widened, and she smirked for a second before schooling her features to a professional mask.

"Ah, that. Come this way, Sir, and I'll explain it." She led him off the main floor to an out of the way corner on the side of the large room, where it was quieter.  

"Q and OO6 are on comms: they’re running the Khartoum mission for One, Seven, and Nine," she started.

Gareth made no verbal response, but lifted an eyebrow in question, and gestured for her to continue.

She shrugged, and a faint frown drew her eyebrows together. "Trevelyan was his usual charming self in Medical, and Fiona ... Nurse Tulloch that is, thought it best for the sanity of the entire staff if he were occupied somehow. She said, and I quote, "Lassie, half their problem’s just boredom. Man like that can't stomach being idle." I thought she might be on the right track, and we got him out of his designer gown and dragged his belligerent arse down here."

She looked over at the agent who wore the pale blue scrubs they'd found for him; he appeared calm for the first time in days.  A faint smirk twisted his lips as Q continued the finger-stabbing argument.

Trevelyan’s fingers again paused in their sliding stroke along the quartermaster's leg, and this time M could see clearly that he was tapping Morse code against the back of Q's thigh.

Q's shoulders slumped, and his stabbing finger morphed into a closed fist that banged down on the workbench surface once in a rare expression of frustration from the usually unflappable young man. His other hand finally released Trevelyan's hair and both returned to the keyboards laid out in front of him, his back straightening and his shoulders set with determination.

Eyes still closed, Alec smiled gently and stroked his palm against the quartermaster's thigh, turning and pressing his lips against the fabric of the cardigan just above Q’s hip. He seemed completely oblivious to the fact that he was sat smack dab in the middle of Q-branch, minions everywhere, his every movement visible to all and sundry. How very unlike a Double O.

R lifted a shoulder in another half-shrug at Mallory's look. "He's also on some pretty hefty pain meds," she admitted. "You've seen the report from Medical?"

He nodded.

"The broken bones are one thing, but you know the rest.  List of his other injuries is half a mile long." She shook her head in exasperation. "He still seems reasonably alert though, and based on some of the things I heard Q relay to the agents when I was listening in earlier, Six’s contributions are valid and timely. He's just a little..." she paused for a moment, searching for the appropriate word.

"Uninhibited?" Mallory tossed out.  She laughed and nodded. That worked.

M frowned slightly and studied the pair across the room.  The Quartermaster was stood much as he always was, his body directly addressing his computers, his feet planted shoulder-width apart and his weight distributed evenly between them. It was his "parade rest", a posture and stance he could, and frequently did, maintain for hours while he ran whatever mission was on the books.

The agent was something of a contradiction, however. Mallory had seen the list of medications Medical apparently had been dripping into him via the intravenous feed at one point or another: a good half of the names were not familiar to him, indicating that they were not prescribed frequently enough for him to know them on sight when he had read the report.  But he had recognized two different pain medications along with muscle relaxants and antibiotics; OO6 had had anti-inflammatories and three different anti-nausea medicines, only one of which had appeared to work. The man was on so many different medicines it was a wonder that he was even conscious, let alone capable of providing mission support to one partner via the other.

Mallory shook his head. It wasn’t such a bad idea, actually, having an agent assisting on the support side of a mission.  An agent would have intimate knowledge of what things were like on the other end of the comms. The techies -- no matter how closely they followed and predicted the action via hacked CCTV and other resources -- were still removed from the intensity of these experiences, never having lived it themselves.  They'd run plenty of missions, but they'd never been the boots on the ground. An agent would provide the support team a new perspective, and assisting with mission support gave an incapacitated agent something on which to focus all of that caged energy rather than terrorising the staff in Medical.

Mallory had already received two transfer requests since the start of OO6’s latest stint in Medical. The two aides had thankfully been talked down from finalising the orders: one by Nurse Tulloch herself and one by R, of all people. He'd heard some interesting rumours surrounding each conversation, but for the sakes of all involved had shown only polite disinterest when the head of Medical rescinded the transfer requests the next day.  

The head of MI6 dismissed the woman beside him with a nod and a murmured thanks and leaned against the wall, watching the pair as they continued to run the mission, communicating silently and efficiently via the Morse code OO6 tapped against the back of the Quartermaster's leg and the replies that Q either tapped on Alec's cheek or verbalised as part of the communication with his agents in the field.

After some time, Mallory saw R signalling Q from across the room and, following the direction of her nod, saw Nurse Tulloch picking her way across the branch, deftly avoiding minions and machinery alike. She did not interact with either agent or Quartermaster, but instead passed behind the workbench and used a needle to add a dose of something or another to the intravenous feed hanging from the pole.

Nothing happened for several minutes, and then Alec seemed to slump, even more boneless than before.

The Quartermaster must have been expecting it, as he signaled to R to take over comms, turned to his partner and removed both his and Alec's ear pieces. He reached for Alec’s undamaged arm while Fiona appeared like magic to support the agent's injured side as the two helped him to his feet and then sat him carefully in the wheelchair. The nurse pushed the chair to Q's office, where they worked in tandem to divest Alec of his slippers and lower him onto the futon.

As Mallory watched from his out-of-the-way corner, Nurse Tulloch handed Q a blanket and a pillow, dusted off her hands in satisfaction, and headed back to her own branch. Q tenderly covered his semi-conscious agent with the blanket and perched on the edge of the futon to tuck the pillow in under OO6’s head; Alec lifted his right hand and caught a fistful of the material of Q's cardigan. Q paused for a moment then, and pressed a gentle kiss to the agent's forehead before running his hand soothingly through the blond hair.

A shudder passed down the length of Alec Trevelyan's body.  His head lolled sideways against Q's thigh and all the alert tension drained from his body as he lost his fight to stay awake. His hand slowly uncurled to drop back down onto the futon as Q continued to card his hand through the sleeping agent's hair, a soft look on his face that, after a moment, made Mallory decidedly uncomfortable to witness. It felt too private for another's eyes.

He caught the eye of one of the minions and gestured for the young man to close the door to Q's office and then turned himself around and headed back to his own, having quite forgotten whatever it was that had brought him down to Q-branch in the first place.

~ OOQ ~

One week, three days, and four hours later, James Bond, Agent OO7 of Her Majesty's Secret Service, returned home with OO1 and OO9, slightly the worse for wear but with no significant damage to either kit or carrier. Said kits were handed in speedily and then the other two agents vanished off to their debriefings.

Bond, typically blasé about the debriefing, instead went directly to Q's office once his kit was accounted for. Alec roused from a fitful doze when James called his name softly, and then struggled up to sit on the edge of the futon, whereupon James knelt between his knees.

He ran his hands carefully over Alec's head, fingers gently probing the bones to make sure there were no cracks or swelling. His fingertips danced over the light fabric of the scrubs, pastel green this time, that clothed the injured man, passing over the site of the clavicle surgery, bandage removed so the wound could breathe, but stitches still clearly present. His palms skimmed over the scrub-clad arms, checked the sling, touched the skin and muscle and traced the insertion point of the intravenous feed now taped to the back of Alec's other hand. His fingers traced along the muscles of Alec's abdomen, over his hip bones and in swirling patterns across his thighs, pressing here and there, touching all the spots that were so commonly injured for men like them. He ran his hands down the length of the plaster cast and then back up his legs, over his hips once more and around to his back, firm pressure gliding up past kidneys and lungs and finally coming to a halt over his shoulder blades.

Q watched with a tiny smile lifting one corner of his mouth from where he leaned against the corner of his desk, and James pulled Alec forward gently, so very gently -- like a dandelion stalk that would disintegrate into a hundred tiny pieces and blow away -- until he could tuck his head in against Alec's right shoulder, his lips so close to Alec's neck that the warm breath tickled the fine hair that grew there. A shudder passed through the kneeling agent's frame and his hands clenched into fists in the fabric of the scrubs that lay across Alec's shoulders.

"I thought we lost you," a broken murmur drifted free and then James buried his face in the warm skin of Alec's shoulder and held on for dear life, the shudders passing through him giving mute testament to the intensity of his emotion.

Q stepped forward until his thighs brushed the shoulders of his partners; mindful of the injuries both carried, he tenderly carded his fingers through their hair.

He said nothing. There was nothing to say. The actions of each carried the emotions between them, and it was enough.

It was many hours later that R peeped through the slight crack between the door and the frame to check on the trio, and found them tangled together on the futon, all three sound asleep. She pulled the door shut silently and tiptoed away, having hung the "Do Not Disturb on Pain of Evisceration" sign on the door. They deserved to rest; they'd all three of them more than earned it.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written 09 January 2017, during a time when I desperately needed some light in the darkness. I hope you have enjoyed it. Please comment to let me know what you think. Comments are the nectar on which busy authors thrive! <3


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